Since the advent of the second Golden Age of Cocktail ten years ago, outstanding mixologists around the world have been venerated along a similar status to that of the football celebrity or movie star – notably in Europe and the Americas. And that’s as it should be. However, it is still not so apparent in other countries.

One example is India where Ashish Sharma, Beverage Manager at the Four Seasons Mumbai works. He says, “I wish that, in the coming years, the Indian market and its consumers will show more respect to its servers and bartenders; and start accepting that working in the bar and beverage industry is a profession. This will help the industry to grow more healthier and in turn will encourage young bartenders to stay longer in the profession.”

He himself has worked and studied hard to get where he is today. “I graduated from the Institute of Hotel Management & Catering, Indira Gandhi National Open University in 2007, then I went to work as Banquet Manager as part of the pre-opening team at the Four Seasons Mumbai. Eventually, looking for more challenges, I moved to the Four Seasons Resort, Landaa Giravaru in the Maldives.”

A significant point in his career came about when he joined the Regent Singapore, another Four Seasons property. It was 2011 and he went in first as Restaurant & Bar Supervisor in the Basilico Restaurant before he was appointed as Assistant Head Bartender at the Manhattan Bar when it opened in 2014, working alongside Bar Manager Philip Bischoff.

He says, “I was part of the pre-opening team and within three years we had racked up a number of accolades including being ranked No.11 in the World’s 50 Best Bars 2016 and last year we ranked in as No.1 on Asia 50 Best Bars list. We were twice nominated in Tales of Cocktails 2015 and 2016 for Best Hotel Bar in the World.”

During his time at the Manhattan Bar, he led, educated and trained the bar team and floor staff by developing new cocktails and working with different and new flavours. By creating a first-in-a-hotel Rickhouse and Ingredients Room, Ashish was able to experiment with barrel aged spirits and cocktails as well as bitters, house-made syrups and liquors. “One of my most memorable and successful concoctions was creating a barrel aged Singapore Sling with Cherry Heering.”

Moving back to India recently, Ashish now heads the Four Seasons Mumbai beverage program where he plans and oversees the centralized preparation of hand-cut ice, fresh juices, custom syrups, spirit infusions, and cocktail batching across all of its F&B outlets.

Along with all of that, his responsibilities also include bar hospitality, cocktail creation, beverage menu creation and staff education for the hotel’s six bars and restaurants, as well as banquets and room service. Whew!

However, his ten years’ experience in the field have enabled him to bring new innovations and styles to the only bar in India to make Asia 50 Best Bars list – AER – ranked at No.37 with its upgraded cocktails and house-made specialties.

The venue is a uniquely glamorous space occupying the entire roof of the 34th floor of the Four Seasons Mumbai. AER is the city’s highest rooftop bar offering a panoramic 360-degree vista of the city and sea under an endless canopy of sky and stars. It makes for a truly memorable experience. Open to the elements, AER’s matchless aspect is further enhanced during monsoon season by the addition of a chic canopy and enveloping windscreen to shelter guests as they experience a most unforgettable drinking encounter of a different kind! It is the place to be for Mumbai’s rich and famous glitterati.

Recognised as an authority in his chosen profession, Ashish was a Judge for Bacardi Legacy India 2016-2017 and World’s Diplomatico Rum Competition 2017 India.

Of the latest trend in India, Ashish says, “The trend now is being detail orientated behind the bar by making the drinks with more precision using innovative flavours and awesome presentations. Today’s consumers are getting more educated about beverages, they know what and how they want their drink to be served.”

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Cherry Heering, Ashish has picked the year 1858. “This is a year that shaped not only the history of India but also of the region. This was the year when the British Raj started in India until it ended in 1947. This was also the period when the East India Company was in the business of trading spices between India and the rest of the world.

“The ingredients I have selected for my cocktail – The British Raj – reflect those moments in history when spices – namely cinnamon, clove, coriander, gunpowder spices and tea – were traded by the East India Company. It was also the company that introduced Cherry Heering to India. For my base spirit, I use Old Monk, an Indian rum that was produced for the British Army.”

THE BRITISH RAJ

Ingredients

45ml Old Monk Rum infused with Cinnamon, Clove & Coriander.

10 ml Averna Amaro

10ml Cherry Heering

10ml Martini Rosso infused with Gunpowder Spices

2 Dash of Earl Grey Tea Tincture

2 Dash of Angostura Bitters

Method

Stir all the ingredients with ice and pour into a Martini glass. Garnish with a twist of orange and a cinnamon stick.

Cherry Heering honors it’s 200th year in business by asking bartenders around the world to pick a past year in the last two centuries and make a drink. For Lauren Mote, female empowerment struck a chord.

When 2018 dawns, it will mark the 200th anniversary of Peter Heering’s experiment to bring the world a perfect cherry liqueur. From humble beginnings, this brand is now so iconic, you’ll find it in nearly every bar around the world. It’s a player in some of the world’s most famous tipples too, from the Blood & Sand to the Singapore Sling.

The men and women behind the brand wanted to celebrate in style, this major milestone, and they sought bartenders around the world to bring a recipe to light that personifies one year in their incredible two centuries of history.

For Lauren Mote, that year would be 1918, and this year would have a big impact on her choice.

“I feel that in light of recent events, women’s voices are calling out, standing firm and a new era is on the horizon,” says Mote, Diageo Reserve & World Class Global Cocktailian and co-owner of Bittered Sling in Vancouver, British Columbia. It’s just hard to believe it’s taken us 100 years to get to this moment, now in 2018.”

Like millions of women around the world, the year of 2018 is feeling nearly as pivotal is just one-hundred years ago, when women saw the light at the end of the tunnel in their decades-long battles for suffrage.

“Women were granted the right to vote in Canadian Federal elections in 1918,” continues Mote. “Individual provinces to follow suit at different times between 1916-1940.”

It’s a personal year for her as well, with her grandmother Rose Dolgy marking a 100th birthday in spring of 2018. “She’s one of the strongest-willed, most powerful women I will ever know, and I learn from and still continue to be inspired by her today,” she says.

Like all great pivotal moments, the right to vote for women in Canada and in America didn’t merely end with a new law scratched onto paper. African American women, aboriginal and indigenous tribes and other segregated sects would have to carry the fight forward for more years to come.

When asked to contribute a cocktail for this very emotional, important year, Mote set her sights on ingredients inspired by the great women in our industry.

“Firstly, Heering’s CEO is Adéle Robbestad, the customer services manager is Anna-Karin Olofsson, and the USA director of marketing is Michelle Chernoff,” she says. “All three women are incredible role models in our industry and have helped bust down barriers, especially at the executive level. I’m grateful to call them friends.”

Her drink also makes use of the beauty of Ron Zacapa 23 Sistema Solera Gran Reserva Rum. The base of this Guatemalan spirit is a wonderful nod to Lorena Vasquez, their master blender.

“In a world with hundreds of blenders, Lorena is only one of five females,” Mote offers. “She is amazing, powerful, incredibly inspirational and a wonderful storyteller. The former Zacapa Global Ambassador, Rebecca Quinonez, is one of my favorite people, and has helped pave the way for ladies of Latin origin in the USA beverage industry and beyond. Lynnette Marrero is the National Trainer for Zacapa USA, and quite honestly one of the greatest spirited women of our generation. Lastly, I would be crazy not to include Bittered Sling Bitters,” she says. “It represents what is possible on the Canadian and international landscape for niche food and beverage modifiers, and it’s a product and company I started back in 2008, with my now husband and business partner, Jonathan Chovancek.”

Thus, The Sisterhood was laid out based around inspiring females. It’s a shaken, strained mix of Zacapa 23-year-old, Cherry Heering, fresh lemon juice, a one-to-one ratio of homemade cinnamon syrup, and two dashes of Mote’s Bittered Sling Malagasy Chocolate Bitters. It’s served with a sliver of lemon peel in a coupe.

“Spending time with the Heering global finalists in the 2016 program … I was so honored to be there, creating their cocktail program for World’s 50 Best Bar Awards,” recalls Mote happily of her favorite memory with the brand. “To be front and center with Lulu Martinez, bartending for an eager crowd on the world’s stage, it felt like we were representing all the women of our generation in the beverage industry.”

For her, this project offered a moment to get back to the simple art of cocktail creation. A chance to glance back at classics, to sip and savor, to think and craft. Her drink resulted with fragrant cinnamon and floral notes, playing against what she calls a ‘star pairing,’ – the combination of Zacapa’s rich rum and tart, unforgettable cherry notes.

“I work on the global team now, as the Diageo Reserve & World Class Global Cocktailian, while my husband Jonathan runs our Bittered Sling Bitters company,” she says. “I love that I have the opportunity to travel the world, to see so many weird and wonderful places. But I always compare each visit to what we have available in Vancouver. For such a small city, we really do have a lot to offer – thoughtful programming in both food and beverage, utilizing sustainable practice in our ethos, incredible scenery, quality of life, high income, diverse world cultures and tourism, and access to local ingredients all year round. To be honest, some of the greatest cocktails and dishes I’ve had, have been right here at home. That’s a really incredible realization.”

*Cinnamon Syrup 1:1, yield 1.0L
20g cinnamon sticks
600mL hot water
600g white sugar
Steep the cinnamon in the hot water for 3 hours, add the white sugar, and stir until dissolved. Allow entire mix to rest in the fridge for 24 hours. Strain out the sticks, filter, and place in dated, clean containers or bottles up to 7 days in the cooler.

Monica Berg is Exactly What the Bar Business Needs

Monica Berg is someone who can really only be classified as an industry leader. And in spite of the fact that it’s overused, it isn’t a term that should be taken lightly. To be honest, there are two types of people in this business: those who follow, and those who lead. And Monica Berg is definitely a leader.

Monica hails from Oslo, Norway, and began her career behind the bar when she was only 18 years old. That’s a really young age to be behind a bar, but she’d been working in the industry well before that. That’s one of the qualities of a leader: they don’t always play by the rules. Anyway, Monica was a big success in the cocktail and culinary scene in Oslo, but she always saw London as the center of the cocktail movement and in 2013 she moved there to manage the bar at Pollen Street Social

As a young bartender, one of her dreams was to go to Singapore and have a Singapore Sling at the Raffles Hotel, but at the time it felt almost unachievable to her. When she moved to London, the first drink order she received was a Singapore Sling, and she thought about how wonderful it was to work in a place where those sorts of classics actually get ordered. A few years later, she did actually go to the Singapore and try one – and it gave her the opportunity to sit and think about how much the industry has changed over the past decade.

But what Monica’s not telling you is that she is one of the people responsible for making such monumental changes to the industry. But since she’s far too humble to say that herself, just let her curriculum vitae speak for itself. In 2015, she was awarded the Linie Honorary Award, an award given to individuals for their great ambassadorship for Norwegian food and drink culture, and in 2017 she received the “Industry Improver” award at the Nordic Bartender’s Choice Awards.

She was part of the bar & creative team at the famed Himkok cocktail bar and microdistillery from 2015-2017. The bar was Top 10 for Best New International Cocktail Bar at the Spirited Awards at Tales of the Cocktail in 2016, and was included in Worlds 50 Best Bars in 2016 and 2017.

She is the co-founder, along with other industry titans such as Jim Meehan, Ryan Chetiyawardana, Xavier Padovani, Alex Kratena, and Joerg Meyer, of P(OUR), an industry non- profit, which works to share knowledge within the drinks industry through an online platform and an annual Symposium.

Berg is passionate about education and knowledge, but does not simply rely on branded trainings as many do. She advocates an open source, more objective initiative, that can educate younger bartenders on the basics. This means that she works hard not only focusing on the liquids, drinks and produce – but also teaching others career-level management skills. “If we want people to think of bars as a long-term option, we need to accommodate for it,” says Berg, “ and we need to start teaching people the answers to the ‘Why’s’ and not just the ‘How’s’.”

For her cocktail, named “Equal Opportunity”, Monica selected the year 1913. The drink itself is a tribute to Norway, which was the third country in the world to pass a bill giving women the power to vote, after more than 30 years of hard work by the women’s movement.

Being a massive lover of aquavit, she couldn’t pass up the chance to make it the base of her drink. 1913 was a few years before Norway’s national prohibition kicked in, so there were still a few independent distilleries around. Sherry was not uncommon, as the trade with Spain dictated a certain amount Norway was required to purchase annually. And while citrus may not be a natural part of the Norwegian flora, there are written sources referencing citrus orchards in the eastern part of Norway in the mid 1800’s, and by the early 1900’s, trade with the rest of Europe was so strong that cities had access to exotic imports.

Aquavit is combined with Cherry Heering, fino Sherry, and pink grapefruit juice in a cocktail shaker. The drink is shaken with ice, and strained over fresh ice in an Old Fashioned glass. Finally a grapefruit peel is used to finish the drink.

Monica is currently in the process of opening her first bar in London, which is estimated to open in 2018, and it’s certain to be another unique and stand-out program that will shine like a beacon to the rest of the world. “There was a period where it felt like everyone was just copying each other, whereas now, it feels as if the bars are more a reflection of the team working – as it should be in my opinion.”

JIMMY BARRAT- ON THE WINGS OF AN ALBATROS

Being a top barmanager responsible for developing a global bar brand is all-consuming and no walk in the park. Jimmy Barrat lives in Dubai and is the global bar development director of the Zuma group where he has worked for a number of years. His version of the Penicillin cocktail with Japanese influences is probably the best twist on this famous New York drink. When creating drinks, Jimmy draws inspiration from history to poetry, a great passion of his, with a mystical touch. When he decided to use the wood taken from a barrel of Macallan to smoke his Japanese Penicillin, he sighed thinking, “We are burning a piece of history!”. I chatted to Jimmy from his office in Dubai. His voice is steady and he’s confident in his words, like someone called to make important decisions at the right time; he has clear ideas that turn into strategies, objectives and results on which important investments hinge.

The importance of an encounter.

“To tell the truth, I was introduced to Cherry Heering when I met Adele Robberstad at Zuma in Dubai,” Jimmy explains.“She told me about her cherry liqueur, its story and how versatile it was in cocktails. We then started working together. Cherry Heering features in the major cocktail recipes. It was easy to be won over by it and today we are proudly celebrating its 200th anniversary. Relationships are very important in our industry. Friendships that come about casually are built around brands, and then they can also turn into great business relationships.”

What inspired the cocktail you created to celebrate Heering’s 200th birthday?

To celebrate Cherry Heering I was inspired by the year 1857, the year Brandy Crusta was created by Italian Joseph Santini. This drink was where lemon juice was probably used for the first time and for me it is a milestone for cocktails. Its versatility paved the way for so many other classics that are still popular today. Charles Baudelaire also wrote my favourite book of poetry in 1857, Le Fleur du Mal. It was important for the modernist and symbolist movements and dealt with current themes such as decadence and eroticism. The cocktail’s ingredients include truffle honey, Cognac and Cherry Heering. It perfectly represents those lavish banquets during the Second French Empire of Napoleon III. This was also a time where literary and artistic movements boomed – Impressionism, Realism, Parnasse. I named the drink Albatros and, it is of course served in a glass that reminds us of the bird mentioned in Charles Baudelaire’s literary masterpiece.

L’Albatros

Souvent, pour s’amuser, les hommes d’équipage

Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux des mers,

Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage,

Le navire glissant sur les gouffres amers.

À peine les ont-ils deposes sur les planches,

Que ces rois de l’azur, maladroits et honteux,

Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes blanches

Comme des avirons traîner à côté d’eux.

Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule !

Lui, naguère si beau, qu’il est comique et laid !

L’un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule,

L’autre mime, en boitant, l’infirme qui volait !

Le Poëte est semblable au prince des nuées

Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer ;

Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,

Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.

Ingredients

50ml Hennessy Cognac XO

20ml Cherry Heering

15ml truffle honey*

10ml lemon juice

Method: shaken over ice

Glassware: glass bird

Garnish: mint spring (for the tail), melted chocolate for the wings and glazed sugar for the feathers.

*If truffle honey is not available, it can be made by placing a black truffle in honey.

Jimmy’s hopes

I’m really pleased that bartending worldwide is starting to become more aware of environmental sustainability. It’s a great way to show how the bar industry cares about looking after our planet. We mustn’t forget that our industry is made up of products and ideas, but most of all, people who enjoy it and are central to it.

How would you like to see bartending?

At the moment, bartending has managed to capitalise on the history of drinks. It has brought back old recipes and their techniques and has improved how we drink. Perhaps we are getting too technical now though, and this has distanced bartenders from their customers. People don’t go to bars for a lesson on spirits by an expert. They want to go somewhere fun, where they feel at home and where they can get to know other people. Bartenders should bear this in mind, turn less to social media and get closer to the real needs of their clientele.

Coffee has shaped the cool green hills of Colombia’s Eje Cafetero region for centuries, but 1835 was a landmark year for the nation’s growers. That year, over 1,100kg of beans left the country bound for the US: the start of Colombia’s coffee exports.

“Colombia is not only known worldwide for the great quality of its coffee, but also for how bold its people are: they are hardworking, kind, enterprising and brave,” says Adrián Madio, 2017 World Class Colombia champion and head bartender at Bogotá’s stunning Juana La Loca restaurant. “All this inspired me to create this cocktail, a small tribute to this land, the fruits it gives us and its people.”

The name of Madio’s cocktail, an elegant blend of rye, coffee and cherry with a hint of chocolate, is Audaz, which translates as ‘bold’. Coffee, which supports over 500,000 farming families in Colombia and remains one of the country’s major exports, features highly. “I use it in a home-made preparation of a Colombian coffee balsamic vinegar and in the garnish,” he says. “To highlight coffee’s tempting aroma, I use a spritz of Coffee Heering.”

Growing up in the little town of San José de la Esquina, Argentina, Madio first encountered Heering as a child, back when it was a rare product indeed in Latin America. “When I was very small, an old friend of my father who lives in Switzerland always brought him bottles of liquor, and one of those was Cherry Heering,” he recalls. “It is a beautiful memory that I have of my childhood.”

Later, Madio would make his first cocktails in a restaurant his parents owned, called Makao. But it wasn’t until he left home to study in Rosario, the provincial capital, that he fell in love with drinks. The bar? Rock & Feller’s, Rosario’s answer to a Hard Rock Café. “It really was like love at first sight,” he recalls. “I was hired as a cook, but when I walked in I saw the bar and I said to myself, ‘I have to work there!’”

After five years, wanderlust kicked in and Madio set off to work his way across Latin America. Following stints in La Paz, Bolivia, Lima, Peru, and Montañita, a beach town in Ecuador, he landed in Colombia in 2011. “The scene has evolved a lot since I arrived, thanks to clients who have travelled and are open to new experiences,” he says. “And, obviously, to bartenders who have been learning through training, competitions and studying independently.”

Besides that all-important education, Madio sees sustainability as a positive trend for the industry, and one that needs to go beyond a passing fashion and become deeply ingrained in bartending DNA. “Another trend that I am very, very happy has begun to be seen is making cocktails at home,” he says. “It increases the interaction of people, friends and family: it’s invaluable that they can create their own cocktails.”

While Madio is impressed with how the industry has expanded over the last few years, he thinks there is much, much more work to be done, both at a local and an international level. “Although the industry has grown a lot in recent years, it is still far from the recognition that chefs receive,” he says. “I would like that someday we are valued in the same way as they are, and that is achieved with a lot of work, and above all through union. We need to relate more and support each other more.”

Winning World Class, a stage along the road to recognition, was a source of great joy to Madio. “There’s satisfaction with the effort made, the energy invested, and all the help from co-workers, friends and family members – but there’s also the pride of being able to represent the country that opened its doors to me on a global stage,” he says. “I will always be very grateful to Colombia and all those beautiful people that I have known in this time.”

And, while Bogotá may still have an intimidating reputation outside Latin America, Madio thoroughly recommends making the trip to the Andes. “As the saying goes, ‘Colombia: the only risk is wanting to stay,’” he says. “Bogotá is a beautiful city, with a great variety of bars and restaurants and constantly growing. But I’d not only recommend Bogotá but many places and cities where there is too much history.”

And a surprising amount of that rich history is bound up in that most magical of beans: coffee.

In a mixing glass we place the ingredients, add cubes of ice, cool and dilute, serve in iced copupe glass, add the large cube of translucent ice, decorate with the cherry, the yellow flower and finish with the fragrance of Coffe Heering.

This talented bartender opens up about her youngest introduction to the beauty of drink design and the challenge of honoring Cherry Heering’s Bicentennial in 2018

What’s in a year? So many memories on a personal level. But in some years, there is catastrophic change, be it good or bad. Cherry Heering is set to celebrate 200 in business in 2018. It’s a milestone the brand will mark by contacting the most illustrious bartenders around the globe, giving each the option to take one year and divulge what it means in terms of not only drink culture but of global humanity.

Hong-Kong-born Evelyn Chick works today in Toronto, at the acclaimed bar PrettyUgly on Queen Street. Petite, known for a love of and a skill with gin tipples and a famously warm smile, she was a natural choice for Cherry Herring in the endeavor. Her year of choice was 1841––and there’s a lot to be said for the moments within.

The year of 1841 was a big one globally. In New York City, America’s first steam-powered fire truck engine was tested. New Zealand was proclaimed an independent colony from New South Wales, and Queens University in Ontario, Canada got its charter.

However, for Asia, the years leading up to 1841were times of upheaval, war, a drug crisis and a trade imbalance.

To fully understand this time, you have to look back to the 1700s and early 1800s. Europe was experiencing a period of high demand for Chinese imports––particularly tea, porcelain and silk. The Chinese were rapidly seeking silver, imported from Europe.

However, for the British importing this silver, the sales were restricted by law to the southern port of Canton, and this was creating tension.

To evade these regulations, traders in the British East India Company began auctioning opium to independent traders in exchange for the English silver. The drugs then made their way up the coastline and into central China. It would create not only a rise in opium addiction around this region, but also a serious trade imbalance. This would all come to a climax in 1839, known as the First Opium War. It lasted from 1839 to 1842.

It was in 1841 that China ceded the island of Hong Kong to the British, officially signing the Treaty of Nanking in ‘42. The island and its inhabitants became a Crown Colony of the British Empire. It would remain under Great Britain until 1997.

“Though the history that led to this event was a blood bath from the Opium War, the influx of European immigrants allowed this tiny military staging point grow to a culturally rich, international city of 7.3 million in population,” offers Evelyn Chick, who grew up in Hong Kong until the age of 15 and wanted this pivotal year of 1841 in order to inspire and craft her cocktail––the Bad Blood.

She formulated a beautiful a mix of Laphroaig Select Scotch, LBV Port, a half-ounce of Cherry Heering and three-quarters ounce of Spanish sweet vermouth.

“The Bad Blood cocktail signifies the gleam of hope and growth coming from a seemingly devastating event,” she says. It’s a slight play on the famous Blood & Sand, without the citrus. The Port adds the drink’s necessary acidity.

Known for her simple executions of complex flavors in a glass, Chick works to adapt her menus to the palates of her guests, whether it’s at the bar at PrettyUgly or at her own home entertaining. In fact, her fascination with drink design began at a very early age, in her childhood, Hong Kong home. She often joined her parents when they hosted business meetings, serving up, Chick recalls, an array of beautiful wines, Martinis, Port and Scotch whisky.

“I wanted to be involved, and was constantly finding ways to ‘host’ my father’s foreign business partners,” she laughs, “by shaking up zero-proof cocktails at home. Hence, I took interest upon spirits and wine at a young age.”

Cherry Heering was among these early introductions, if in name alone. “I remember the fascination towards the Singapore Sling, and the economic status it carried if you knew how to order it at a bar,” she recalls. An early admiration would lead to a significant moment for Chick in Asia, as her career blossomed.

“A few years back, I had the privilege of being the first-ever guest bartender at the Long Bar in the famed Raffles Hotel in Singapore during the inaugural Singapore Cocktail Week,” she says. “It was incredible to watch the volume of Singapore Slings that went out from that bar to serve guests from all over the world. I made a menu surrounding Cherry Heering and had the pleasure to make a few Singapore Slings using the original recipe in its home bar. It was a bucket list experience.”

Bad Blood

1 oz Laphroaig Select

0.5 oz LBV Port

0.5 oz Cherry Heering

0.75 oz Spanish Sweet Vermouth

Pour ingredients over one large cube in an Old Fashioned glass, stir to dilute and zest an orange peel over top to release oils.

Dale DeGroff quotes David Wondrich and stands by his claim that ‘the cocktail’ is not only, “a metaphor for the American people, but also the very first American culinary art form”.

Within the 200 year history of Heering there have been many drink trends to come and go. It was DeGroff who dug up the term ‘Mixologist’ from early 19th century drink scriptures. He was dubbed a ‘master mixologist’ (at the frustration of many who felt bartender was sufficient). He did this to differentiate his craft as one who understands the process of not just mixing spirits and liqueurs, but also how they’re made, by whom and where. He can also lay claim to the resurrection of the Blood and Sand cocktail and the continuance of heritage brand rejuvenation.

As an educator, public speaker, and patriarch of bartender culture, DeGroff’s contribution to his craft has inspired countless thousands by way of online education through the BarSmarts course. This platform hosts consistently evolving and updated course content for young bartenders to learn; bartending, cocktail recipes, tasting, front and back of house skills before being then accepted to sit an annual five day face-to-face MasterClass with his collective brain child group of educators, Beverage Alcohol Recourse (BAR).

At 69 years young the stately gentleman says, “his cocktails are numbered”. So, taking shots at the bar with his mates or drinking every drink on your menu are not inherently assumed as a path to greatness, merely; he prefers to sip and spit menu tastings, “no offence” he says.

DeGroff speaks with all the conviction and purpose of well made Blood and Sand. He notably sips Talisker, a dram with it’s inception formed long before the American whiskey acts he so proudly touts as one of the prime ingredients in the metaphorical establishment of America. He gets to the point, he is quietly charming – the sign of a true master. Moreover, he’s humbled by life’s gifts, grateful for his career challenges and victorious in his life living in New York with his steadfast wife and two sons.

DeGROFF AND HEERING

Cherry Heering came into my orbit when I was researching old pre-prohibition drinks for the first Rainbow Room Menu in 1986. I came across this godawful recipe called the Blood and Sand with four very unlikely ingredients; orange juice scotch Cherry Heering and sweet vermouth… At first, I just dismissed it out of hand as an impossible combination. But it kept popping up in very prestigious cocktail tomes so I made one and to my astonishment it was really good. That was the moment I realised I needed to taste drinks before condemning them to the trash can.

I came to discover after using the drink for my first cocktail dinner at the Rainbow Room in the mid 1990s, paired with a meat dish that the drink could only work with Peter Heering Cherry Heering, something I would also discover about the Singapore Sling. They needed a world class cherry liqueur to really taste correct.

My partners and I in a company called Beverage Alcohol Resource (BAR) began with a once a year masters class in 2005 that lasted a week and ended with a day of testing. The drinks company Pernod Ricard came to us and asked us to create a similar but not-so-advanced interactive online course for the journeyman bartenders. We were a bit leery about the branding aspect (the Five Day Program is not branded and never has been). But Pernod Ricard had such a vast portfolio that included many recognised classics almost all categories that we made a deal and proceeded.

We made it clear going in that the course would be comprehensive and would require the use of multiple non-PR products and they were cool with that. So we created the BarSmarts Course.

The online version took a couple years to perfect but as of this year we have topped 14,000, bartenders and the number grows each year. We added a live advanced element that is a day-long event for 150 bartenders that include lecture and live testing to certify. The testing includes blind tasting spirits, practical bartending that requires making a round of drinks for judges as well and a 100 question written exam.

This is what is trending. Education. Not just our program although it may be the most ambitious, but programs like it around the world that finally offer the kind of education that has not existed in this profession since prior to prohibition certainly in our country certainly and has existed for hundreds of years on the culinary side of the business on the apprentice master format as well as in prestigious culinary academies.

DeGROFF’S CHOSEN YEAR IN HEERING HISTORY

I chose 1897 because my drink is based on Americas whiskey.

The first popular whiskey in colonial times was rye whiskey which of course led to the true American heritage product of Bourbon whiskey. E.H. Taylor the founder of OFC (Old Fashioned Copper) distillery and John G. Carlisle, Secretary of the Treasury in 1897 worked together to convince Congress and the president to pass the Bottled in Bond act that went a long way down the road to protecting America’s heritage product bourbon. Unscrupulous rectifiers who bought barrels of Kentucky whiskey stepped on whiskey traditions with all kinds of additives and then sold it cheaper as “fine old Kentucky Bourbon”.

The bottled in Bond Act did the following:

Whiskey made from one distillery

Made in one season

Aged for four years in a government bonded warehouse

And bottled at 100 °

Federal excise Tax added after ageing

President Grover Cleveland signed the bill into law on March 3, 1897.

Some believe that the protection of the bourbon whiskey led to a much wider look at all food and drugs leading to the passage of the 1906 Pure food and Drug Act. That act added protections to the definition of American whiskey expressing that pure whiskey could have no additives except water.

1909 Taft amended the whiskey definitions to say that the neutral whiskey blended into straight whiskey had to be made from grain not molasses. Straight whiskey and blended whiskey were defined, straight whiskey could have no additives except water to bring the proof down; everything else was blended whiskey.

1938 the law was amended again to include the use of only new white oak barrels. Congress amended again in 1964 to include the working made in the USA only. Oddly the home of 95% of the bourbon produced in the United States the Commonwealth of Kentucky named milk as the official state beverage.

Today there is a resurgence of Bottled in Bond bottlings in American whiskey and not just bourbon but including Rye Whiskeys as well.

DALEDeGROFF’S RYE & CHERRY PUNCH

Please follow these amounts and directions exactly … : > ))

MARTHA’S CHERRY & RYE PUNCH *

(Batch recipe for 1 gallon and 2 liters of punch) Inspired by the Cherry Bounce by Martha Washington made with George’s farm produced rye whiskey and Farm produce cherry brandy.

Ingredients

2 x liters American Rye Whiskey

12 oz. Rainwater Madeira (This can be sourced from a number of producers like Leackcocks, Sandeman’s or Blandy’s) No substitutes

20 oz. Peter Heering Cherry Heering No substitutes

2 liters spring water Refill each of the Whiskey bottles ( the punch is low alcohol hence the same amount of water as whiskey).

DOUBLE SHRUB (use a quart container with a top that seals

8 lemon zests and 2 orange zests; the fruit MUST be firm and fresh. Prep. early the day of or the day before the event … needs about 6 hours to work. The steps cannot be skipped in other words the lemon zests must sit in the sugar for the full time to work… no liquid until the sugar has pulled all the oil from the lemon and orange peels.

Ingredients:

8 very fresh and firm fancy lemons

2 fresh and firm navel oranges fresh

2 cups Granulated sugar

2 cups Fresh Lemon Juice

Preparation:

Using a peeler remove only the zest from lemons and 2 oranges no pith. Pound the zests with 2 cups of sugar in the quart container. Screw down the top when finished and shake well right side and upside down… set aside for six hours …

AFTER 6 HOURS or the next day if you made the shrubs the day before:

Add 12 ounces of FRESH lemon juice to each double shrub … screw down the top and shake well until the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove the zests and place them all in a large bowl and cover them with the spring water … this will remove the last of the sugar lemon flavor, use that water as part of the 2 liters of water for the punch

The year 2014 was a landmark for Nikos Bakoulis and Vasilis Kyritsis, the best-known bartenders in Greece: it’s the year they opened, with three non-bartending partners, their much-awarded bar, The Clumsies. Kyritsis cites it as one of the three greatest experiences of his life, alongside winning World Class Greece in 2012 (Bakoulis won in 2011) and working a stage at Tony Conigliaro’s Drink Factory.

In fact, after working together for five years and co-owning a business for more than three, the pair consider each other brothers. They finish each other’s sentences, complete one another’s thoughts, and might, for all the world, be related – an affinity that comes in handy in the workplace. “We try to work as one person,” Bakoulis explains. “There are small gaps, for example Vasilis gives more focus to upstairs and the lab and how the lab runs, while my focus is more on the bar needs and the daily routine. But for the drinks we work all together as a team.”

So insanely inventive are those drinks that The Clumsies’ menus – themed around topics including Einstein’s theory of relativity – can be news events in and of themselves, while the bar holds the highest position in the 2017 World’s 50 Best Bars list outside of London and New York. Their 2017-18 menu, Genesis, centres on Greek words that have been adopted into English. With drinks titled Nostalgia, Eureka, Chaos, Echo, Phosphorus, Siren, Nectar and the like, it neatly solves one nagging problem for Greek bartenders: creating drink names that both their home customers and their international audience can understand.

A new menu is in the works for spring, but the pair’s Heering cocktail, Aristocracy, follows the Greek-English pattern: the name literally means “rule of the best”. It’s a hybrid of the gin and tonic and the cherry gin sling, with extra complexity from their house-made Mediterranean elixir. (Bakoulis and Kyritsis got to know each other while working at The Gin Joint, and it’s still a spirit that’s close to both their hearts.)

While the part of The Clumsies which draws media attention is The Room, an intimate, reservations-recommended upstairs space that houses no more than 13 guests, the pair and their partners are more than comfortable in the world of high-volume bars. The Clumsies’ downstairs space holds 350 people and the drinks list, which focuses on vintage cocktails and premium spirits, is entirely different from the cutting-edge and often culinary concoctions served upstairs.

In recent years, Athens has come to punch far above its weight in cocktail terms. For a city of under 700,000 people in a country with fewer inhabitants than Moscow, the Athenian bartending scene is spectacular. Yet, the pair agree, it’s a very new phenomenon. “Our first bar was only opened in 1957, so if you compare it with London or New York, where some bars have 200 years history, we only have a short time,” says Bakoulis. (The bar, Au Revoir, is still run by the founder’s son and has never been redesigned, Kyritsis adds.)

Before that, the only businesses that sold alcohol were kafeneio, Greece’s answer to the village pub or an old-fashioned Italian bar. “You could have a coffee and some meze (a little tapas), with some ouzo or tsipouro: but no spirits like whisky or gin,” Bakoulis says.

Both Bakoulis and Kyritsis have worked in bars since they were 18. They agree that Greece’s economic crisis helped drive the growth of the hospitality industry, not least because so many people drifted into the trade due to pressure on more conventional jobs. But they also feel, although the only drinks brand to have travelled outside Greece is Metaxa, that the country has good bartending fundamentals. “We have a lot of fresh spices, herbs and fruits – and when Greeks start to do something they give their best,” says Kyritsis. “That’s why Greek bartenders have grown their skills very, very fast, and having so many ingredients with good quality gives us the chance to work more creatively.”

Yet if they could change one thing about the bartending industry, it would be addressing the egotism that can cloud what is still, at heart, a hospitality role. “We would try to explain to bartenders how important it is to be humble, and not focus only on the drinks but focus more on the customers, the people, the staff: try to lower down your egos and be more humble,” Bakoulis says.

“Everything starts from there,” Kyritsis adds. “If you work a lot with yourself, you can create better drinks: you open your eyes, you open your mind, so more inspiration comes to you.”

The Lunch Punch has brandy, lemon, cherry heering, Darjeeling tea, milk, and a few props to keep you busy if your date is a drag.

By Laura Hayes, Feb 1, 2018

Today in things-you-can-drop-a-hundred-dollars-on-in-the-District: childhood nostalgia. barmini by José Andrés rolled out a playful new cocktail flight this week that attempts to capture the feeling of Saturday mornings spent watching cartoons and eating cereal as well as the wonder that comes from seeing magic tricks.

To make the Lunch Punch, pictured above, mixologists at the experimental cocktail lab stir together brandy, lemon, cherry heering, Darjeeling tea, and milk. It also arrives with a few super ’90s props that will keep you occupied if your date’s dull or you